Aspen Peak - Niche Media - Aspen living at its peak
Issue link: http://www.ifoldsflip.com/i/205356
and Finally ... mountain peaks & qs The "Real" Aspen Extreme I t's hard to overstate just how much Aspen Extreme influenced my life. One glimpse of the sun-kissed ski bunnies clad in black stretchy pants and Dexter Rutecki's exhortation to "Dream big or don't dream at all, baby," and I was ready to head for the hills. For aspiring mountain men of a certain vintage, the seminal 1993 film beamed a bright light on the life we could lead on the slopes as swashbuckling ski bums among superstars. Our heroes, T.J. Burke and Rutecki, fled their mundane Detroit existences to chase their dreams in Aspen. Through bumbling one-liners ("My friend was not in the Olympics"), they taught us the allure of affluent older women, the perils of drug trafficking, and how many shrimp came in a shrimp cocktail. Suddenly, everyone wanted to rent a caboose on the river and write about skiing. Aspen Extreme marks its 20th anniversary this year, and while much has changed in Aspen since its debut, many things remain the same. Each November a new rookie class rolls into town, hoping to stake their claim in the most beautiful box canyon in the Rockies. Many will compete for the coveted red and black jacket of the Ski & Snowboard Schools of Aspen/ Snowmass, but none will ascend the ranks as fast as Burke, whose rugged good looks and smooth skiing took him from Ford assembly line to Aspen poster boy in one short season. Most, however, will suffer a similar fate to Rutecki, who, clad in a Santa suit, teaches lessons to screaming kids and loses a rude, rotund student while careening away from Lift 1A. The film posits two starkly different paths to travel: Either you end up flushing 10 large worth of devil's dandruff down The Red Onion toilet and get beat up, stripped naked, and left for dead by a biker gang or you move into a palatial cougar den on Red Mountain and start wearing black mock turtlenecks, shiny boots, and a silver-tipped belt to fancy parties. Both are slippery slopes that will alienate you from close friends and confuse your moral compass. Much of the action in Aspen Extreme revolves around training for the Powder 8 Championships. The boys hike above 14,000 feet (while Dexter smokes) in search of the perfect powder turn. Rutecki must execute a daring rescue when Burke skis into a crevasse and is inverted into a pool of icy water while still clipped to his bindings (highly unlikely due to the lack of glaciated terrain around Aspen, but suspend your disbelief for a moment). All of this seemed impressive until Chris Davenport, Aspen's steep-skiing savant, skied all 54 of Colorado's 14ers in one calendar year. The film debuted when free skiing was in its infancy; the word "extreme" was just entering our ski-bum lexicon and had yet to be plastered on everything from deodorant to pick-up trucks. Ski legends Doug Coombs and Scot Schmidt lent their skills to the film, and the skiing holds up remarkably well, but action sports have since exploded. Aspen is now host to the Winter X Games and our own Torin Yater-Wallace is at the forefront of progression in freestyle skiing, landing the first switch 1800 (five full rotations with a backward takeoff) in a competition last year, positioning himself as the one to watch at the 2014 XXII Olympic Winter Games in Sochi. The film certainly got one thing right about Aspen: "Skiing is the easy part." The hard part, as Burke learns at the end of the film—after winning the Powder 8 and the hearts and minds of the locals—is leaving. AP in A maz gly A sp en! illustration by Paul Dickinson the film Aspen Extreme elevated our little ski town to cult status 20 years ago. Today, the hilarious—and nefarious—stereotypes live on, as noted by Emmy Award–winning producer Oliver Sharpe. 216 aspenpeak-magazine.com 216_AP_BOB_And Finally_WIN13_SPR_14.indd 216 10/30/13 12:05 PM